Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce where products can be bought, purchased, and/or traded online, such as through the Internet, or by using a specially designed application or app resident on the user's computing device such as a personal computer, a tablet, a smartphone, and/or the like. At least some known web hosting systems include search engines that allow users to enter search criteria (e.g., a search query) and to generate search results based on the user's search criteria. Typically, the search engine generates a list of products based on the user's search criteria, and the list of products may be displayed to the user, such as on a webpage or through the specially designed application or app resident on the user's computing device.
For many online shopping services, the webpage or application offers faceted searching to allow the user to narrow initial search results to a more manageable number of search results, which include items that are more on-point and meaningful to the user. For instance, the online shopping service may generate initial search results based on the user's search query entered into the search engine. The initial search results can be narrowed to a more manageable number of search results by selecting one or more facet(s) and/or facet value(s) presented on a left hand navigation (LHN) portion of the webpage.
Since each user and each search query is typically different, one challenge with current online shopping services that utilize faceted searching is that selection and ordering of facets and facet values presented on the LHN portion of the webpage have to be individually optimized. Another challenge with current online shopping services that utilize faceted searching is determining how many facets and facet values to actually display on the webpage for a given search query. In turn, it is also a challenge to determine how many facets and facet values should be demoted; i.e., not actually displayed but accessible by selecting a “see more” link, button, or hyperlink set forth on the webpage. Manual ordering of facets and facet values is typically not feasible due, at least in part, to the large number of users and the large number of search queries entered into the search engine, as well as the generally dynamic nature of the item or product search database.
The present disclosure is aimed at solving the problems identified above.